Archaeology Notes

Event ID 854040

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/854040

NS28SE 37 centred 2920 8388

This anti-aircraft battery is situated on the N side of Helensburgh near Ardencaple Wood.

The battery has recently been demolished and the four gun emplacements and command post with two additional holdfasts on each flank have been reduced to piles of rubble. There are many hut bases to the SW of the battery where the accommodation for crew was located. On the W side, are blast walls for what could have been three Nissen hut magazines with paths leading to the gun positions.

Records show the armament at one stage to be 3.7-inch guns.

Information from Mr J Guy, August 1996

Recorded by MR J Guy in the course of the Strathclyde Survey. The GL-mat (gun-laying radar mat) is depicted on the current OS 1:10000 map. (information from RCAHMS {DE}, May 2001)

J Guy 2001; NMRS MS 810/11, Part 2, 113-14, Vol.2 (appendix), 11-12

A RAF WW II oblique aerial photograph (F 309, 3656, flown 6 JUne 1941), shows the battery before the erection of the Gl-mat for the radar unit. In addition a possible dummy battery and the accommodation camp are clearly visible on the photograph. (Battery is also shown on vertical air photographs taken in 1985 which show that traces on the dummy battery survived to that date).

Information from RCAHMS (DE), November 2005.